This project was a lot of fun for me. I wanted something that no one else had done,
but not something that would be “hard”.
Lemonade was something that came to mind right away. I sketched up my idea and eagerly awaited
getting started. My first goal had been
to collect all the needed equipment, and as I walked to the studio I had
reserved, the moveable wall that contains a window jumped out at me. I asked if anyone else was using it and
quickly moved it into my studio and my ideas started changing just a bit to
include this window.
The window, to me, helped to speak of late summer afternoons
on the porch. We put a light behind the
window to simulate the sun, and as I worked on this image it looked more like
the light coming from inside the house onto the porch table and lemonade
outside. I was pretty excited! With help from classmate assistants we quickly
arranged my props with my lemonade in a tall jar. I wanted to wait to cut the lemons I had
placed on the cutting board, as well as waiting to pour lemonade into the glass
until the lighting was all set up.
Positioning the bottle of lemonade on the table with a
highlight hitting it to go along the length of the bottle was actually the
hardest art of this project, but it was a required element for the assignment. With my instructor's help we moved a flat diffuser panel into place to help bounce the light and
soften it as required. This diffuser
panel had to be placed literally up next to the camera lens, across the table
as close to my bottle of lemonade and the glass accompanying it so that it
wasn’t in the frame, and still allow the window to be placed in the back of my
photo.
I really wanted the bottle of lemonade to be the focus, but
felt that it needed some props. Lemons,
a bowl, a knife, a glass, all added to my arrangement without taking
away from the bottle. It’s not unusual
to have a slice of lemon on the rim of a glass of lemonade, so I added that to
my glass and to the carafe of lemonade. Simple,
and understated, that still allowed the bottle of lemonade to speak for itself.
As I took pictures we noticed dark areas in the background
that we hadn’t intentionally set up, but when looking at them on my laptop they really worked great! It gave some
great dimension and depth to my image that drew the eye around the entire
frame. Some of the lemons had a great
highlight on them, as well as the bottle of lemonade that contained the
translucent highlight along the length of it.
These highlights all added “life” to my image. While lighting the bottle was my biggest
challenge, I wouldn’t say it was particularly “hard” for me to accomplish. I think I was also pretty successful in
getting some true tonality throughout my entire image.
I am pretty happy with the final image for this
project. I know that there is always
room for improvement, but for my first attempt, I was pretty happy with the
results. I can’t wait to learn more in
the coming months and come back to this image to see what I am will still be
able to improve upon. I had a few things
that I think really helped me in completing this assignment. I had great team members to assist me and
their input was very helpful. I also
think it was a tremendous help for me to have sketched my idea out so that I
could use that as a reference for a starting point. Keeping my mind open to changes and others' input was also incredibly helpful.
Having learned some very basic studio lighting was helpful, but I know
that I still have so much to learn on this.
My final image was pretty much what I had sketched out, with the
addition of the window and some other minor additions or changes.
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